Raphael John-Lall

Econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon has called for a com­pre­hen­sive study to guide Trinidad and To­ba­go’s mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy, ar­gu­ing that the coun­try must first iden­ti­fy its labour short­ages and fu­ture eco­nom­ic needs be­fore de­ter­min­ing how mi­grant work­ers should be in­te­grat­ed in­to the work­force.

“More im­por­tant is the need for a broad work force study of the econ­o­my with a fo­cus on po­ten­tial growth sec­tors such as agro-pro­cess­ing and tourism or new in­dus­tries for which lo­cal skills might be in short sup­ply,” he told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

He was com­ment­ing on the Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est ini­tia­tives to reg­is­ter all el­i­gi­ble mi­grants in T&T.

Ramkissoon said mi­grants from any coun­try should be al­lowed to reg­is­ter to work in T&T, but stressed that a more strate­gic ap­proach was need­ed to de­ter­mine the coun­try’s ac­tu­al labour re­quire­ments.

He pro­posed that mi­grants be clas­si­fied ac­cord­ing to fac­tors such as their skills and age, while their char­ac­ter and back­grounds should al­so be as­sessed to pre­vent crim­i­nals from en­ter­ing the coun­try.

Such an as­sess­ment, he said, would al­low T&T to de­vel­op a mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy that ad­dress­es gen­uine labour short­ages while tak­ing ac­count of its age­ing pop­u­la­tion and de­clin­ing birth rate.

Ramkissoon al­so said he did not con­sid­er the $710 reg­is­tra­tion fee un­rea­son­able, not­ing that the ad­min­is­tra­tion of these ser­vices car­ried a cost to tax­pay­ers. How­ev­er, he sug­gest­ed that pro­vi­sions should be made to re­duce the fee in ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances.

He stressed that a strate­gic mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy must be sup­port­ed by more ef­fec­tive bor­der pro­tec­tion.

“One would have thought that by now we would have mas­tered the nec­es­sary re­la­tion­ships and hard­ware to en­sure bet­ter bor­der con­trol,” he said.

The Gov­ern­ment col­lect­ed $1,839,610 from 2,592 trans­ac­tions be­tween No­vem­ber 1 and 4, 2026, un­der the mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion card pro­gramme. Mi­grants were charged TT$710 for each card trans­ac­tion.

Un­like the 2019 reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise, which fo­cused on Venezue­lan na­tion­als, the ex­pand­ed pro­gramme cov­ers el­i­gi­ble mi­grants re­gard­less of na­tion­al­i­ty.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew short­ly be­fore the pre­sen­ta­tion of the bud­get, Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics Roger Ho­sein said T&T would even­tu­al­ly need to bet­ter in­te­grate Venezue­lan mi­grants in­to the for­mal econ­o­my, in­clud­ing through con­tri­bu­tions to the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Sys­tem (NIS).

He stressed, how­ev­er, that eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy should fo­cus on cre­at­ing sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment rather than sim­ply ex­pand­ing in­for­mal work.

New process un­nec­es­sary

Econ­o­mist Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, who has con­duct­ed stud­ies on mi­grants in T&T, has ques­tioned what ad­di­tion­al ben­e­fits the Gov­ern­ment’s new mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion cards will pro­vide. He ar­gued that the pri­or­i­ty should in­stead be en­forc­ing ex­ist­ing laws and bring­ing un­doc­u­ment­ed work­ers and busi­ness­es in­to the for­mal econ­o­my.

“I do not think this new process will bring more work­ers in­to the for­mal econ­o­my as we al­ready have had reg­is­tra­tion in the past. I am not sure what the cards are go­ing to add,” Gon­za­les told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

He ar­gued that some mi­grants were de­lib­er­ate­ly avoid­ing reg­is­tra­tion be­cause they want­ed to trav­el il­le­gal­ly be­tween T&T and their home coun­tries while main­tain­ing their un­doc­u­ment­ed sta­tus here.

Gon­za­les said this arrange­ment could al­so ben­e­fit em­ploy­ers seek­ing to re­duce labour costs by hir­ing un­reg­is­tered mi­grants at low­er wages and avoid­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the NIS.

He main­tained that bring­ing the in­for­mal econ­o­my un­der ef­fec­tive con­trol was es­sen­tial to ad­dress­ing the prob­lem, ar­gu­ing that both work­ers op­er­at­ing with­out per­mits or reg­is­tra­tion and the em­ploy­ers hir­ing them should face penal­ties.

“The prob­lem is that many mi­grants are re­fus­ing to reg­is­ter as they want to move il­le­gal­ly back and forth be­tween here and their home coun­try and use their il­le­gal sta­tus here to get a job as the em­ploy­er can pay them low­er wages and avoid NIS,” he said.

Con­tri­bu­tion to

hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try

With Venezue­lan and oth­er Caribbean mi­grants form­ing a sig­nif­i­cant part of T&T’s bar and hos­pi­tal­i­ty work­force, Bar­keep­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go pres­i­dent Satesh Moonasar has en­dorsed the Gov­ern­ment’s reg­is­tra­tion pro­gramme, say­ing all work­ers should con­tribute to the na­tion­al econ­o­my.

He not­ed that Venezue­lans, along with mi­grants from oth­er Cari­com coun­tries, were em­ployed across the sec­tor.

“Every sin­gle per­son needs to con­tribute to the well-be­ing of their coun­try,” Moonasar told the Busi­ness Guardian.

He said he sup­port­ed the reg­is­tra­tion process and the is­suance of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, ar­gu­ing that the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to know who was liv­ing and work­ing in the coun­try.

Moonasar al­so backed the prin­ci­ple that all work­ers, re­gard­less of na­tion­al­i­ty, should con­tribute their fair share to­wards the cost of run­ning the coun­try.

“In my opin­ion, it shouldn’t be on­ly mi­grants. Every sin­gle per­son, should pay their fair share, whether it be NIS, health sur­charge, PAYE, so forth. The bur­den of the en­tire state is on their back. So in my opin­ion every sin­gle per­son needs to con­tribute to the well-be­ing of their coun­try.”

Fair treat­ment

On the treat­ment of mi­grant work­ers in the bar in­dus­try, Moonasar said ex­ploita­tion was min­i­mal and main­tained that work­ers were gen­er­al­ly paid at or above the min­i­mum wage.

“I can say for the bar sec­tor, we pay them above min­i­mum wage,” he said.

He ac­knowl­edged that bar work was de­mand­ing, in­volv­ing long hours and night shifts, but said em­ploy­ees re­ceived fair com­pen­sa­tion for their ef­forts.

Moonasar al­so praised the work eth­ic of mi­grant em­ploy­ees, de­scrib­ing it as bet­ter than that of many lo­cal work­ers.

“Hon­est­ly, mi­grants’ work eth­ic is a lot bet­ter,” he said, adding that hos­pi­tal­i­ty busi­ness­es were in­creas­ing­ly turn­ing to mi­grants be­cause some lo­cal ap­pli­cants were un­will­ing to take up the avail­able jobs.

He said mi­grants were con­tribut­ing to the econ­o­my be­yond their em­ploy­ment, through their spend­ing on gro­ceries, ac­com­mo­da­tion and oth­er goods and ser­vices.

Moonasar de­scribed mi­grant work­ers as an im­por­tant part of the coun­try’s labour force, not­ing that their con­sump­tion al­so sup­port­ed busi­ness­es and helped sus­tain com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty.